On-site Training Workshops

Leading Effective & Engaging Meetings Training

Training Participants Will Learn the Skills to...

Meet less and get more doneBy using the tools and tips in the workshop we guarantee that meetings will be at least 100% more productive. Participants will learn how to make meetings start and end on time.

Use simple tools for leading productive meetingsWe provide training participants with simple tools for leading a well organized and focused meeting. Also, tools for ensuring that each meeting ends with a clear set of agreements for next steps and actions will be provided.

Get better attendance and interestTeam leaders using our tools will create more interest among their meeting attendees, thereby increasing attendance.

Get more team buy-inTeam members will buy-in to ideas and decisions using our meeting processes, making them more likely to bring the ideas into action. Participants will learn tools to make meetings more interesting, engaging and worthwhile for everyone.

Everyone contributesWe provide training participants with the tools to enable their meeting attendees to contribute significantly.

Make better group decisionsUsing the decision making tools we train, better decisions will be made.

Enable greater creative contributions in a meetingTraining participants will be given the tools to stimulate creative thinking and problem solving in their meetings.

Deal with difficult meeting situationsThere are approaches a meeting leader may use to ensure that dominating personalities, silent people, challengers, know-it-alls and others that will cover in the training.
Description

This workshop is more than just a meeting management training. We train meeting leaders to lead productive and engaging meetings. After attending this course your leaders' attendees will no longer feel like they are wasting their time at meetings. In fact, they may actually enjoy going to meetings (imagine!).

Topics Include

How to set and create an effective agenda.

Selecting meeting roles that make sense.

Dealing with difficult situations/people.

Keys to getting others to collaborate in the meeting.

Following the 7 important meeting steps.

Tools for collectively generating ideas and making good decisions.

How to ensure you have better and better meetings.

Setting up the meeting room for optimal performance.

How to record the output of meetings.

Staying in control of the meeting.

How to evaluate meetings for continuous improvement.

Ensuring follow-up and accountability.

Tips and tools for remote meetings

Creativity and problem solving

Workbook/Reference Book

.Workshop participants will receive a workbook that is more of a reference guide. Most everything that is covered in the training is in this workbook. This book is an excellent guide and resource that provides detailed descriptions and "recipes" of meeting concepts and tools/techniques. You will learn how to make your meetings more productive and engaging through:

Training Details

Duration: 4 hours to 1 day .
2 day advance version available
Purpose: Become delivered from the drain and drudgery of meetings
What: Hands-on training for providing important tools to make meetings more productive and engaging
How: This workshop is highly interactive and productive. We model a great meeting in the training. The training actually runs like a meeting. Participants will experience all the critical meeting tasks including planning, framing, warming, focusing, accountability, evaluating meetings and more.
In the 8-hour training, each person will practice leading meetings by conducting a mini-meeting using many of the simple interactive tools we teach them.
Where: Off-site or on-site

Innovation Agility Training: In the Pursuit of the Aha!

Heading

Goals

Generate ideas fluently

Create ideas that are “out-of-the-box”

Look at problems from different perspectives

Eliminate mental "kinks" that get in the way of creative though

Know how to “exercise” your creative thinking

Outline

The Creative Self: Defining who are you as a creative person

Learn the three key creative skills which is the “meat” of the training. We refer to these skills as the F.F.U. which stands for Fluency, Flexibility and Uniqueness.

Learn the key strategies and tools for each the F.F.U..

Practice each skill by engaging is the Brainstormers Game™ which is a semi-competitive and very fun creative thinking game

Explore why you stay in the box - Get your “kinks” out through the Blocks/Unblock Game™

Participants examine the “kinks” that get in the way of their creativity.

Taking It Home: Next steps for ensuring creative thinking in the workplace.

Benefits

Be able to generate more ideas and solution

Increase flexibility in ones thinking processes

Know how to come up with new ideas easily

Reduce creative blocks

Have easy-to-apply strategy and tools to find solutions to problems

Training Details

Duration: 2 hours to 8 hours
Purpose: To develop the 3 key creative thinking skills, and a whole bunch more. To significantly improve one's ability to generate great and creative ideas in less time. To increase problem solving abilities.
What: Highly interactive and fun workshop devoted to achieving increase ability to generate ideas fluently, flexibly and Uniqueness (F.F.U)
How: This workshop is 95% active. This workshop is fun and productive. Participants play games designed to exercise the innovative mind
Where: Off-site or On-site

Customer Service Excellence Training: The Ultimate Basic Customer Service Workshop

From The Inside/Out

This powerful, tailored, 4 and 8 hour workshop will give your staff more than just the foundation on providing good internal and external customer service. It will give them the motivation, desire and ownership to satisfy your customers with excellence. That's why we subtitled this workshop "From the Inside/Out."

The impact that great customer service has on the customer as well as themselves

Training Approach: Creating Buy-in

Most training participants know what good and bad customer service is, but they may not provide it in their jobs. They may not have made the mental connection between what they know about customer service and their specific jobs. They also may not be clear on what to do to provide great customer service. Our customer service training provides both the awareness and the clarity that they need to give excellent customer service. Our customer service workshop also creates this awareness by creating "buy-in" with the participants. This is done by having them build their own Customer Service for Excellence Model based on their experience of good and bad customer service. They then gain clarity of what to do in their jobs by creating specific strategies, procedures and "next steps" based on the created Customer Service for Excellence Model. This process will establish good customer service habits in your workplace. The result will be individual plans and tactics for how to work with their customers so that the customers feel that they are well taken care of.

We find that this training approach is far more effective than most customer service training programs. We believe that the way to ensure your customer service agents provide great customer service is to go beyond technique and the "suppose to-dos." Our focus is on getting "buy-in" from the workshop participants and getting their 100% agreement as to what things they can do to create excellent customer service experiences for their customers.

Highly Interactive Format

This workshop is fast-paced, 80% interactive, participatory, and productive. It includes discussions, fun games and quizzes, demonstration and practice, lecturettes, storytelling, role plays, and problem solving. Participants will be working individually, in small groups and in large groups.

Typical Outline

Introduce & Set Expectations

Warm-up: What does Customer Service Got To Do With It?

Establish How Customer Service is Critical to the Success of the Organization

Tailored to Your Organization & Needs

Before our training our trainer will spend time getting to know your business and tailoring the training to your business. They will use relevant examples and focus on the type of customer service your staff provides. For example, this training is flexible enough to focus solely on customer service on the phone. So if your business is a service, manufacturer, or retailer the training will fit right in.

Focused on Results

Participants will also be asked to commit to using the new skills/tools by completing our "Commitment Form."

Long and the Short of It: 8-hour v. the 4-hour

The 8-hour version includes developing a Customer Service Policy that the group collectively creates. This policy includes the specific behaviors needed for each person to provide great customer service. This makes a powerful workshop even more powerful.

We also offer a shorter version for Keynotes & Conferences. This 1- to 3-hour version is extremely dynamic and fun. There are lots of interactive activities that focus on the importance of providing great customer service and how to completely satisfy your customer.

Custom(er) Workbook

At the end of this workshop attendees will create a model of what good and bad customer service is. They themselves will have established principles for providing excellent customer service. Though each group typically comes up with fairly common responses, the wording and perspective are unique to each group. In order to ensure greater buy-in the workbook is handed out after the session and includes their ideas and decisions about establishing excellent customer service. This is what makes this workshop powerful and special.

It's Easy to Arrange

It's easy to arrange. Pick a time and place and we will send an expert trainer out to you. Just fill out the request for proposal and we'll do the rest.

Training Details

Duration: 4 hour to 8 hours
Purpose: To significantly improve your internal and/or external customer service. to bolster your staff’s ability, desire and enthusiasm to serve their internal and external clients/customers responsively and with great care.
What: A series of highly interactive activity designed to light the "fire" under your staff.
Number of people: 5 - 500
Where: Off-site or on-site

Finding the Solution Training

Problem Solving & Decision Making Training

Learn the tools and processes to find the right problem and solution to most any problem or situation. Finding the Solution is a highly interactive and memorable training workshop. The participants will learn specific tools for solving problems by doing...by solving problems. They will develop awareness and understanding of the need to use a problem solving process and how to use it. The focus of this training may be on group or individual problem solving and decision making or a mixture of both.

They will learn how to find solutions using 4 steps:

Targeting - Define, prioritize, focus and analyze problems. They will learn the techniques that go with each step such as "gap analysis," "random stimulation," and "decision making analysis".

Idea Generating - Generating ideas

Decision Making - Making the best possible decision

Action Planning - Ensure that solutions are implemented

One, Two or Three Day Workshop?

The goal for the one day is to learn how to use the tools. The two-day or three-day workshop goal is to learn the tools and also apply them to a variety of problems.

Tailored to Your Organizations Training Goals

Tailored to your needs This workshop may be tailored to fit your particular needs.

Finding the Solution Work & Recipe Book

The workshop workbook is filled with tools that are recipes for solving most any problem. We treat this book like most any recipe book when creating a meal. In using a recipe book you pick and choose whichever recipes would suit your needs. Much in the same way, pick and choose the “recipes” in this book that are appropriate for the problem. The participants will learn which "recipes" to select under different circumstances. These recipes are for "rational" problems (a problem as a result of a change) as well as for creative problems (a new situation or opportunity). It is divided up into five sections: 1) The Stages and Tasks of Problem Solving 2) Targeting 3) Idea Generating 3) Decision Making and 5) Implementing

Finding the Solution Cards

Each problem solving tool taught in the workshop can be summarized into one essential question. Targeting and idea generating questions are on the beautiful Finding the Solution Cards. Each participant will receive a set of these cards to ensure that these tools are used in the workplace.At this meeting we will guide your leaders through sticky business challenges and decisions so the team uses the brain trust to its highest ability. These cards are optional.

Your team will be developing solutions and/or making tough decisions collectively and easily!

Training Details

Duration: 1 day or 3 days
Purpose: Solve technical or creative problems as a team or individually
What: Learn an intuitive 4-step process and the tools that go with each step
How: Learn how to use the tools for solving problems and making decisions
Where: Off-site or on-site

"A problem well defined is a problem half-solved.”John Dewey

Leading Ideation Meetings: How to Lead Brainstorming Sessions

Make your ideation meetings easy and successful

Guide Ideation, Idea Generation, Brainstorming sessions for...

Product Development

Services Development

Marketing Strategies & Messages

Solutions to Problems

Workshop Goals

Participants will learn how to...

Use simple tools and processes for creating a more directed focus in brainstorming meetings.

Make ideation sessions more productive - get more ideas in half the time.

Make ideation meetings more interesting, engaging and worthwhile

Build a dynamic, effective and successful agenda

Structure the ideation meeting to ensure the greatest amount of ideas

Get more buy-in from meeting participants

Learn the Ideation Process

Topics Include

Keys and tips on making ideation meetings the best they can be.

Keys to accessing the creativity in the group.

Getting your participants involved and engaged.

Fitting the ideation tools for the appropriate personalities and problem

How to lead a brainstorming session including setting up, framing and ending a session

Workshop Format

This workshop is highly interactive. The participants collectively create an agenda of a ideation meeting. They will experience all the critical meeting tasks including planning, framing, warming, focusing, "follow-throughing", and evaluating meetings. Each person will be practicing leading brainstorming meetings by conducting a mini-meeting using many of the simple interactive tools we teach them.

Tailored to Your Needs

This workshop may be tailored to fit your particular needs.

Workbook for the Workshop

Creative Collaboration: Simple Tools for Inspired Teamwork. This is a recipe book filled with activities designed to get your team's creative juices flowing: from warm-up exercises, ideation tools, and team energizers. Each activity includes a time estimate, needed supplies, suggested group size, and hints and examples for the team leader.We will guide your group to establish the appropriate strategic message for your product or service. Everyone contributes and collaborates. And we are able to extract the wisdom of the group.

Training Details

Duration: 2 to 3 days
Purpose: Develop the skill to lead an extremely productive ideation/brainstorming session.
How: Looking at all the key elements that make an ideation session successful.
Number of Participants: 3 to 15 people
Where: Off-site or on-site

We use a large variety of approaches to ensure that your training is highly productive and extremely engaging and fits your group’s personality. We balance introverted and extroverted facilitation approaches to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to contribute for heavy buy-in

The best in the class

Expert, Professional & Experienced Trainers

Testimonials

What they are saying

"Thank you for your hard work in our Messaging Workshop yesterday. As always, your mastery of the room was beyond impressive. Feedback from the client has been terrific. Everyone was just so blown away that you were able to maintain not just interest, but enthusiasm for six plus hours."

Eve Alintuck

Project Director, Advertising/PR Firm - Brandfusion

Our management group came together around a shared vision. We are currently integrating two companies into one. This meeting helped to reduce the we/them and increase the us. Optimism, increased teamwork and confidence in the direction of the company. Top-Three-
I would recommend this service. The tools and methodology the Bruce uses are very effective. He brings everyone into the process and helps drive the discussion to a consensus. like_working_with_me?: Bruce is easy to work with, professional in his approach and an excellent communicator.

Paul Fry

General Manager, Dow AgroScience

Our strategy and vision for an IT organization is critical Creativity from all level of the organization will lead to a much wider vision [as a result of the Innovative Thinking training].
-Sr Director IT

Rod Anderson

Senior Director of IT, Clearwire

Honig IdeaGuides

We are a meeting facilitation, team building and training group specializing in innovation, improving and developing team collaboration and customer service.